


feathered beings battle royale

by petalprose



Category: Good Omens (TV), Good Omens - Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett, Untitled Goose Game (Video Game)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Untitled Goose Game Fusion, Domestic Fluff, Established Relationship, Fluff and Humor, Gen, M/M, Other, Post-Apocalypse, Quote: Honk (Untitled Goose Game), Theft, deeply sorry for the kismesis tag but it. it fits., st. james' park
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-15
Updated: 2020-01-15
Packaged: 2021-02-27 10:53:39
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,755
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22265920
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/petalprose/pseuds/petalprose
Summary: It starts, as it will go on and on and on in a terrible feud until it ends when the goose inevitably triumphs over them both—according to Crowley's great wisdom, that is—in St. James' park.Aziraphale and Crowley encounter a goose. Whether or not it ends well is highly debatable.
Relationships: Aziraphale & Crowley (Good Omens), Aziraphale/Crowley (Good Omens), crowley ♠️ a goose
Comments: 10
Kudos: 43
Collections: Aspec-friendly Good Omens, cross's portfolio





	feathered beings battle royale

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Ferairia123](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ferairia123/gifts).



They’ve been spending their days together, more often than not. This day in particular finds angel and demon in St. James’ park.

Aziraphale grins at Crowley from a bench, watching with no small amount of delight as Crowley engages in a spirited argument with a goose.

 _Honk,_ goes the goose, emphatically.

Crowley throws his hands up in the air. The goose’s gaze follows the motion. “I said you aren’t getting the bloody feed,” seethes Crowley, glowering at the waterfowl. “It’s for the ducks. You hear me? _F_ _or the ducks_.”

 _Honk_. The goose flaps its wings. It does not care for Crowley’s terse negotiations. It is a goose. _H_ _onk._

“Trying for a role in that clown movie, are you,” says Crowley. He looks at Aziraphale. The goose makes for the bag of feed in Crowley’s hand and he raises it higher almost absentmindedly. “Aziraphale, you’re the one who made eyes at this goose earlier. Help me get it off my back.”

“I seem to recall you taunting it with clarity, dear,” says Aziraphale, still highly amused. The goose honks in what Aziraphale will take the liberty to assume is agreement. “What was it you said? Looked too suspicious? Got too overzealous with its play for the feed that passerby threw?”

“Whatever I said it _clearly deserved it,_ ” says Crowley, gesturing emphatically at the goose.

The goose takes offense.

It seems like time stops, though Aziraphale knows better, as Crowley is so clearly thrown off guard by what happens next he could not have possibly frozen it. In quick succession, the following things happen:

One; the goose honks mightily.

Two; Crowley begins another jeering taunt at it.

And three; the goose launches itself at Crowley’s midsection.

“Oh!” Aziraphale stands from the bench as soon as the bird moves, startled into action. He wrings his hands and dithers, watching as Crowley immediately begins flailing about, swatting at the goose. “Crowley—look what you’ve done, you’ve managed to _provoke_ it—”

“Angel!” Crowley’s glasses are knocked askew and from what Aziraphale can see of his eyes, they’ve had the yellow of it take over, and the look in them is panicked and bewildered. “The feed! Save the feed!” With that, he chucks the bag of it over to Aziraphale.

Aziraphale catches it without thinking. There is a moment of stillness over the park. Absently, in the brief moment of peace, Aziraphale realizes that passersby have started to gawk at the spectacle; then in the next heartbeat the goose switches targets and goes for him.

“Wha—“ Aziraphale makes a cut off noise of indignation, raising the bag high above his head with one hand and fending off the goose with the other. It is aggressing his coat, he notes with mounting distress. “Oh my word— must you really!”

Crowley’s doubled over and begun to laugh in the meanwhile, recovering in the wake of Aziraphale’s plight. The sight of it makes Aziraphale’s cheeks colour, but it doesn’t quite manage to undercut how cross he is. Or how cross the goose is, speaking of, Aziraphale gets the wonderful reminder that geese can _bite._ He yelps and yanks his hand up to his chest.

Oh, honestly, he has half a mind to give the brute of a bird a lecture of unearthly magnitude. Never mind that he hasn’t had the need to speak to geese in centuries, he’ll get his point across either way—the goose couldn’t very well just go on thinking it could accost innocent bystanders for the sake of food, now, could it? Count it as divine intervention and completely disregard the fact that it is Just A Goose. It has moved on from his coat and is making a play for his bowtie. Aziraphale feels his ire is deserved.

(Aziraphale is decidedly not thinking about the small measure of satisfaction imagining the report of that miracle turning up at his former Head Office, and if you asked him, he would politely misdirect until you dropped the subject.)

He tries to think of a plan of action that does not involve catapulting the goose. Before he manages to do anything besides frown and bat and wave, Crowley recovers from his brief laughing fit. Wiping tears from his eyes, Crowley straightens up, a smile still lingering on his face as he watches Aziraphale argue with a bird.

“Need my help now, do you,” he says, clearly enjoying himself.

“You should be so lucky,” Aziraphale says, turning his chin up. He makes sure to inject as much pomp into it as possible, and it pays off; Crowley takes notice of his tone. He laughs again, though, and Aziraphale resolves to tune him out as he goes about his next course of action.

Gently, Aziraphale places a hand on the goose’s head. This irks it even more, but Aziraphale disregards that and looks it dead in the eyes.

(In his peripheral view Aziraphale can see people taking their phones out. He wonders if later on Crowley would be showing him a video of his showdown with the goose. Oh, hopefully not. It would be dreadfully embarrassing.)

“Please refrain from further harassment upon my person,” says Aziraphale, as serenely as he can physically manage whilst addressing a bloodthirsty goose. After a quick moment of deliberation, he adds, “Why not the red-haired gentleman you had first taken issue with? He had been the one to begin keeping the food from you, after all.”

The goose is silent. Aziraphale thinks he’s successfully convinced it (for a brief, delirious second, his thought process frames it as him _winning_ ) before the goose’s head, quick as anything, moves forward. It strikes gold and snatches up the bag of feed in its mouth.

Aziraphale watches, stunned and bagless, as the bird detaches from his person and makes off with its prize.

* * *

Later on, Crowley does manage to find a video of Aziraphale’s quarrel. Not through any proper sequence of taps and apps, mind, but by believing that if he opened the YouTube app a video uploaded by one of the park patrons would be ready for the watching.

Aziraphale makes a show of huffing and being bitter, though really in the end he can admit that it _is_ quite amusing. He does hope that he won’t have to deal with the goose again. The next time they go to St. James’ it’ll just be for a walk—the chances of having an unpleasant encounter with the same goose are infinitesimal, of course, and he’d never even seen the goose up close before the day’s events, but he supposes taking an extra step to purposefully avoid any waterfowl wouldn’t be too out of the question, and _oh, Crowley, would you stop laughing! It's a wonder my coat survived its wrath!_

 _"_ You threw me under the bus so readily," says Crowley, in a tone of great wonder. "You felt so threatened by a _goose._ A _goose,_ that you—"

Aziraphale glowers at him. The rest of his statement dissolves into a poorly suppressed snicker.

 _Ahem._ It was simple enough, so it could hardly go wrong. Small margin for error there.

This statement carries all the confidence of someone who has had Murphy’s Law bite them in the ass and still had not learnt their lesson.

* * *

Among other skills, Aziraphale rather excels at willful ignorance. The leaps of logic he’s had to conduct over the millennia would put a seasoned gymnast to shame. Pointed indifference is something that bloomed into practiced perfection from being in contact with the other angels and learning to appease them.

Therefore, it is an easy enough feat for him to simply Not See the goose. There would be a small measure of comfort in seeing Crowley apparently do the same thing, had there been anything to not see. They walk through St. James’. They make idle conversation. They ignore the relentless stare at their backs. If there was a stare, it was certainly not coming from a goose with a grudge.

Or simply a goal. Aziraphale almost shudders to think about if it had a grudge then thinks better of it. What grudge? What goose? Nothing out of the ordinary here.

They move along. They hear the _splash_ of water, the flapping of wings. They move along faster. Simply getting the most out of the daylight, you see.

Now Aziraphale, of course, holds no fear in his heart toward the goose. That would be absurd; he would resent the notion, if it were even worthy of resentment. As it is, it is only worthy of an accommodating chuckle. It was very, _very_ incorrect; and he means this most sincerely. He’s an angel of the Lord, after all, no matter how removed from the Heavenly Head Office he may be. A one-track-minded, determined goose could not rattle him. The only interaction with it he had had was it accosting him for unlawful, in its eyes, possession of a bag of food. He hadn’t even been the main culprit in the first place, _Crowley_ had been. So, no, Aziraphale wasn’t scared of the bloody _goose._

The pitter-patter of its webbed feet getting closer by the second was starting to fray his nerves, however.

“My, I’m getting rather hungry,” says Aziraphale, brightly. He turns a smile at Crowley, wide and with no room for argument. “What would you say to some lunch, dear?”

“Hmm?” Crowley’s mouth is a flat line. Aziraphale can see his eyes from this angle, and they’ve gone a bit wide. The lower lid of his right eye is twitching enough to be noticeable. It’s admittedly a little amusing; it looks as though Crowley is gearing up and fortifying himself in case the goose ever decides it wants to attach itself to his back. Good foresight, at the least, as it seems more and more likely that the goose will do exactly that. “Yeah, lunch would be nice.” With that, he snaps his fingers, and suddenly he’s got a picnic basket by the handles.

So Crowley wants to tempt fate. Well, who is Aziraphale to dissuade him?

The goose gives a honk.

(Oh, no, Aziraphale’s gone and acknowledged its existence. Well, there was a lost cause.)

Aziraphale throws willful ignorance to the wind. Who is he to dissuade him? Well, the poor bastard that would otherwise get dragged along into the mess, that's who. “Crowley,” he says, in a low voice. “Please don’t tell me you plan on provoking the goose.”

Crowley gives a laugh that immediately communicates to Aziraphale that yes, the daft fool is planning to provoke the goose. Honestly, the things Aziraphale puts up with for the pleasure of his good company. “Don’t worry, angel, half the things in this basket are things geese can’t eat.”

There are a few things in that statement that concern Aziraphale. "I don't recall you being so knowledgeable on the diet of geese,” he says testily. “Do you think that’s going to stop the bird at all?”

“If it knows what’s good for it.”

Aziraphale sighs and resigns himself to his fate.

* * *

When they come back to the bookshop, Aziraphale fumbles with Crowley’s smart phone, wrestling with its controls until he manages to navigate his way to the YouTube app. It’s an odyssey and an ordeal but it’s _worth it;_ he holds the phone aloft in triumph, Crowley brandishing a breadstick at the terrible goose as it flaps its wings and honks on grand display on its screen.

Crowley hides his face in his hands, glasses off and on the table. “All right,” he says, miserably, as Aziraphale titters at the video. Video-Crowley swings the breadstick and the goose bites it, yanks it out of his hands, and hurls it off-screen. Aziraphale can hear his video-self give an appalled gasp. “You were right. Just say ‘I told you so’ and pause the video, angel, there’s no need to make me relive it.”

“Oh, but dear,” says Aziraphale, with great mirth, “Those who do not remember the past are doomed to repeat it, don’t you know? Lovely adage, that, and quite relevant. It’s my duty—it’s simply responsible of me, you understand, to ensure that you do not forget—“

“Angel!” Crowley sinks into the couch cushions as though he’s trying to pass through it. He will find no such respite; Aziraphale is determined to make Crowley experience a _taste of his own remedy. Medicine._ Actually, on further thought, _medicine_ sounds to be the correct ending to that phrase.

After a while of Crowley griping about the _frankly appalling display of schadenfreude, Aziraphale, come on, show some decency,_ Aziraphale decides he’s had enough. The poor dear has covered himself with the throw pillows, an arm thrown dramatically over what little of his face is still showing through, and in all honesty Aziraphale has rather run out of clever jokes.

“Crowley,” says Aziraphale.

The approximately Crowley-shaped mass of pillows does not deign to respond.

“ _Crowley,”_ repeats Aziraphale. “I’ve finished, dear.”

He responds this time. “Are you sure?” he snipes, voice muffled by the pillow on his face. “No new videos, new material? Have you decided what you’re going to say at my funeral?”

Aziraphale frowns. “Funeral?”

“One more word,” says Crowley, darkly, moving the pillow and lifting his head to show a glare to match. “Another word out of you about how I lost to that beastly goose and I’ll discorporate.”

“Well, now, there’s no need to be so morbid,” says Aziraphale. He hands Crowley his phone and the demon takes it like it’s coated in holy water, looking a second away from hurling it across the room. “But really, dear, perhaps you should consider _not_ instigating fights against the waterfowl next time.”

“There’s not going to be a next time because that blessed goose has taken over the park,” says Crowley. He waves in an aimless gesture. There is an impressive amount of malice in it. “The whole place is _its_ territory. We can’t go back there, not as long as it lives.”

“Don’t be ridiculous. We’ll go next week to allow you time to lick your wounds.”

“Lick my wounds!”

“Your ego seems to have taken a bit of a hit, after all.”

“This is it,” says Crowley. “I’ve discorporated.”

“How unfortunate.”

“The heartbreak,” mutters Crowley mutinously, head falling back down, “The betrayal. Angel, invite the goose to the funeral, why don’t you.”

“I will do no such thing, seeing as there is not actually going to be a funeral. Buck up, dear, it’s just a goose.”

“Just a goose!” Crowley props himself up on his elbow to look at him, incredulous. “You were menaced by it just yesterday; have you already lost all your empathy?”

Aziraphale barely restrains himself from rolling his eyes. “I wasn’t encouraging it to attack me.”

“Neither was I!”

Aziraphale stares at him.

“All right, fine,” relents Crowley. “So maybe I did a bit of taunting. But did it _really_ have to bite my ear!”

“Well—“

“Never mind,” says Crowley quickly, “Don’t answer that.”

Aziraphale obliges. “We’ll go next week,” he suggests again. “We can’t stay away from the park forever, Crowley.”

“ _Au contraire_. The park’s just one place in the vast, infinite expanse of the universe. But fine,” he concedes, at the sight of Aziraphale's pursed lips and cocked brow. “We’ll go back next week. Maybe its thirst for blood will have been curbed.”

“Excellent,” says Aziraphale, satisfied. “We’ll go Thursday. In the meantime, I noticed a cooking video, I think it was, browsing the YouTube earlier. I’d like for us to try it out.”

“We can go to the supermarket tomorrow,” says Crowley. “let me sulk for tonight.”

“Hm.” Aziraphale eyes him. Crowley meets his gaze evenly. “All right, just for tonight. You won’t mind if I get started on my taxes while you _sulk,_ will you?”

“Still can’t believe you do your taxes. But no, I won’t mind. 'S long as you do it over here so I can use you as a footrest."

"Wonderful encouragement, dear, really. How I swoon."

"Swoon your way here," says Crowley, already moving his feet to make room for Aziraphale. "Anyway, I was menaced by a goose today, angel, I need my comforts."

"Of course." Aziraphale goes to sit in the vacant space, more than willing to be a source of comfort as opposed to being a footstool.

They pass the night side by side. Elsewhere, as they chat and gradually forget about it, a goose feasts on what it had won from two strange beings. It's a satisfying end to the day for both parties.

**Author's Note:**

> i am so terribly sorry for posting late, but i hope you still enjoy this.
> 
> never played untitled goose game. want to. maybe stay tuned for a possible squeakquel wherein the spouses stumble upon the goose's treasure hoard of things pilfered from park-goers. also if u catch the lemon demon reference ill love u forever


End file.
